"Your Survival Strategies Are Killing You!"

Archive for March 8th, 2011

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

Bruce Lee

Here’s a little worksheet for you. Take a few minutes to fill it out. It may show you how to better deal with a difficult problem/person in your life.

1) Identify a person or a situation in your life where you feel like you’re fighting the river and swimming upstream (no matter how hard you try, the situation or the person simply never changes): _______________________________________

2) Identify three things you struggle with most in this situation or with this person – three things you resist and would change if you could. Example: I don’t have the resources, support or time to do the kind of job I want OR She’s too self-centered, rude and disrespectful. ________________________________________________________________

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3) If these three things changed, would that reduce your resistance/struggle and make you feel better? ________________________________________________________________

You cannot get to peace and effective results from this place! Whatever you resist, persists. It is a law of the universe. Things are how they are, People are how they are. As soon as you accept that, you can then be a source of influence to change it. Don’t get into a fight with the people and circumstances in your life. You may win the battle, but you will lose the war. Life will not be pleasant or happy or fulfilling for you or anyone around you.

Accept that it is how it is, s/he is how s/he is. Like it, don’t like it, it doesn’t matter. The universe doesn’t care. Let go.

4) If these three things never, ever, ever change, what changes do YOU need to make to adjust? How will you creatively handle yourself, what will you creatively do, how will you creatively respond if you and you alone are responsible for being effective, happy and free? __________________________________________

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5) The three things I need to change about MYSELF to be effective in my difficult situation or with my difficult person: ___________________________________

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Be like water. Go with the flow. Stop trying to change the things/people outside yourself and look within at how YOU can creatively respond/react differently to achieve the results you’re looking for.